Saturday, August 3, 2013

The Nevada Board of Parole Commissioners order says the decision relates to two kidnapping and two robbery convictions and one conviction for burglary with a firearm. But Simpson, 66, will continue to be held for related convictions for which he is not yet eligible for parole.

The case stems from a confrontation Simpson had with two sports memorabilia collectors at a Las Vegas hotel room in 2007. Simpson, a former superstar in the National Football League, said he was attempting to retrieve his own memorabilia.

Three co-defendants pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against Simpson, who was convicted and sentenced to 33 years in prison, with the possibility of parole in nine years.

Simpson still faces time for four weapons related sentences and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon. Simpson, who is serving his time at Lovelock Correctional Center 90 miles from Reno, faces at least four more years in prison on those sentences.

Simpson was accused of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole, and Ronald Goldman on June 12, 1994. In the so-called trial of the century an all black jury, save one, acquitted him despite a mountain of evidence. It was widely considered jury nullification.

An Austin police officer who fatally shot a man after a short pursuit last week told internal affairs investigators during a lengthy interrogation Thursday that he unintentionally fired his gun, the American-Statesman has learned. Detective Charles Kleinert told investigators that he had drawn his weapon as part of his effort to subdue Larry Eugene Jackson Jr. and that during a struggle between the two, Kleinert lost his balance, fell over and that a single round accidentally went off, several sources confirmed. Jackson, 32, was shot once in the back of the neck.

They love to conclude that "it was an accident," or that "there was no foul play." This is the way they minimize the human error part of the incident. This is the way they excuse the negligent actions of the shooter.

No accidental shooting happens without the violation of at least two of the 4 Rules of Gun Safety. It's impossible.

Gun owners, and yes even cops, should be held responsible for their negligent actions.

Local news reportsA man who walked around the downtown with a toy gun that appeared real was charged with terrorizing Thursday night.

John Cushman, 20, "made lots of people nervous" when he strolled through town with a toy gun tucked into his shorts, said Deputy Chief Shane Cote of the Farmington Police Department.

An employee at the Homestead Bakery on Broadway called police at about 9:50 p.m. and then called employees at The Roost pub to warn them that a man was wandering around with a gun.

The Roost employees locked the doors with patrons still inside, Cote said, and as police searched for the man, the employees asked for a police officer to stand near the door because some patrons wanted to leave.

Farmington officer William Tanner arrived at The Roost and saw Cushman showing the gun to someone outside. It looked real, Cote said, until he saw the orange ring that toy guns are required to have. The ring was not visible when the gun was tucked into Cushman's shorts, Cote said.

He said Cushman was charged with terrorizing because his actions scared people and caused them to secure themselves in a building.

Cushman was taken to Franklin Memorial Hospital and released without a mental health evaluation. He was then taken to the Franklin County Detention Center, Cote said.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has filed a petition to the US Supreme Court, asking it to allow licensed gun dealers to sell handguns to youths between the ages of 18 and 21.

The appeal filed by the NRA and two 19-year olds is a fresh attempt to overturn a 1968 law which bars federally licensed dealers from selling handguns and handgun ammunition to people between ages 18 and 21.

The law was challenged in court last year, where it was unanimously upheld by a three-judge panel for the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“This categorical burden on the fundamental right to keep and bear arms passes constitutional muster because law-abiding young adults likely do not possess Second Amendment rights at all,” the petition reads.

The current legislation does, however, leave quite a number of options for people older than 18 and younger than 21 to obtain weapons, as they are still allowed to purchase shotguns and rifles from licensed dealers. As for handguns, they can get a hold of them as well, provided they receive them as gifts or purchase them from private owners.

Friday, August 2, 2013

Of those 1,776 readers, the vast and overwhelming majority were men.
The female readers (about 2%) cited the sexism that seems to be
pervasive in certain members of the editorial staff’s posts as a reason
why more women wouldn’t read the blog. Which explains the conspicuous
lack of supermodel references recently.

This, of course, is total bullshit. The soft porn that Robert used to push on his site was not nearly pervasive or offensive enough to be responsible for the lack of female readers. The fact that the blog is about guns is.

The attempts on the part of gun-rights fanatics to claim women are making up a more and more significant part of their world are superficially and obviously false. Here's the proof from the number one most successful and most read gun blog out there.

The stream of illegal guns from southern states being used in crimes in New York City has increased, despite efforts to stem the flow, officials said on Wednesday.

In 2011, 90% of the 2,433 traceable guns used in crimes came from out of state—a jump from 2010, when 86% of the 2,319 guns used in crimes originated outside of New York, according to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives data cited by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Raw Story (here's the original video)The Pennsylvania police chief who made a profanity-laced videos while firing machine guns and ranting about liberals has been suspended without pay for 30 days.

After a 55-minute executive session, the Gilberton Borough Council voted 5-1 on Wednesday to suspend Chief Mark Kessler for using “borough property for non-borough purposes without prior borough permission” by using machine guns and other weapons in his YouTube videos. Kessler had donated the weapons to the borough earlier in the year.

In online videos posted in July, Kessler had used profanity to berate “libtards” and suggested an armed rebellion against the government.

According to WFMZ, Michael Morrill, executive director of the liberal group Keystone Progress, delivered a petition with 20,000 signatures to the council on Wednesday demanding that Kessler be fired.

Local news reportsA 26-year-old man being investigated for accidentally shooting a girl was arrested after deputies found several stolen weapons and learned he was not allowed to own firearms.

The Butte County Sheriff's Office was called to Oroville Hospital about 11:10 p.m. Sunday, after a juvenile female arrived with a gunshot wound to her back, according to a BCSO press release.

Deputies learned it was likely an accidental shooting by an acquaintance, Donald Patrick Browning. However, deputies determined Browning was prohibited from possessing firearms or ammunition.

The BCSO started searching for Browning, but did not locate him at two Oroville residences where search warrants were served, stated the press release. Deputies, however, did allegedly locate five firearms that had been reported stolen to the Oroville Police Department.

Deputies continue to search for Browning and ultimately located him at a Thermalito residence where he was arrested early today, according to the BCSO.

Patrol deputies allegedly also located to more firearms in the area where Browning was arrested, one which was reported stolen to OPD.

Browning was booked into Butte County Jail on multiple weapon violation charges. His bail is set at $70,000.

You see, only after determining he was not a lawful gun owner were charged brought. This is how they protect each other. Lawful gun owners are allowed to be as negligent as they want because they're the good guys. But don't expect to get away with shooting someone accidentally if you're a disqualified person.

The Daily NewsThe Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms got its first permanent director since 2006 Wednesday, when the Senate confirmed B. Todd Jones, by a hair.

It was supposed to be easier. The White House and gun control groups had made an issue of the agency’s lack of a permanent boss. President Obama listed confirming an ATF chief as one of his high-profile gun control priorities in January.

On the other side of the ledger, the National Rifle Association, whose hostility to the mission of the ATF Democrats blame for the longstanding failure to give the agency more than an interim boss, declined to fight Jones.

Authorities in eastern Indiana say a 4-year-old girl was shot in the head when she dashed in front of her 8-year-old brother while he was target shooting.

Jay County sheriff's Capt. Patrick Wells tells WISH-TV that the shooting of Madison Dyer was a tragic accident.

The Star Press reports Madison was taken to a Fort Wayne hospital after the shooting Sunday night at a home near Portland but that a hospital spokesman said he couldn't give an update on her condition.

Police say several adults and children were around a campfire while the boy was shooting a .22-caliber rifle and Madison ran into the line of fire.

As the publication describes, gun violence is not a problem without solutions. We know what works,

we’ve seen the difference it has made in California, and we are already seeing the same success in states around the country.

Proof in the Data: Thousands of Lives Saved

Over the last twenty years, the number of people injured or killed by guns in California has decreased dramatically. In 1993, 5,500 Californians were killed by gunfire; by 2010, the most recent year for which data is available, that number had dropped to 2,935.3 In just two decades, the state’s gun death rate has been cut by 56%, a reduction that translates to thousands of lives saved every single year.4

Gun Death Rates in California and the Nation

Over the last twenty years, California’s gun death rate has decreased dramatically.

The rate of gun violence in California has also fallen notably compared to rest of the country. Today, California has the ninth lowest gun death rate of any state nationwide when twenty years ago, it had the thirty-fifth lowest rate.5

California has taken a comprehensive and courageous approach to addressing the epidemic of gun violence, and that approach has succeeded. The state’s strong gun laws not only help save lives, but also reduce the trafficking of illegal guns to other states and to Mexico, protecting lives in neighboring communities.6

Local news reportsGenerally, under New York State law a person --before using deadly force for self-defense -has a duty to first retreat if they can safely do so, according to prominent defense attorney Paul Cambria.

"There are a couple of exceptions," noted Cambria. "You don't have to retreat if you're in your own home."

As well, Cambria notes there are a handful of offenses for which someone can use deadly physical force to stop from occurring.

"The statute makes it clear that robbery is one of those offenses that you can use deadly physical force and there's no duty to retreat," Cambria said. I don't know why the gun-rights fanatics are always complaining about New York laws. The exceptions to the duty to retreat provision seem to include everything they like. But they're not satisfied with being legally allowed to shoot and kill an escaping robber, they also want to be able to stand their ground if someone calls them a punk and it sounds like a threat.What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

Only responsible people like cops and soldiers should own firearms, right? It would seem from the picture of the “lost” AR15 above, that the police aren’t quite as responsible with firearms as the public generally gives them credit for.

Most gun control advocates don't want total civilian disarmament. But that doesn't stop the gun-rights fanatics from arguing against that as if it were the general gun control platform.This is called a straw-man argument and it is utilized by those who know they're on the wrong side of the debate and have to clutch for any victory they can get.What I say is "Only responsible people like cops and soldiers should own firearms." Cops and military people should be held to the same high standards as anyone else who owns and uses a gun.What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

An Arkansas school district is taking a page straight from the NRA's playbook, arming more than 20 teachers and staff members this fall in response to what administrators say was an overwhelming number of complaints from parents worried in the wake of Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy. Here's the Associated Press with the details from Clarksville (pop. 9,200), located about a 90-minute drive from Little Rock:

[M]ore than 20 teachers, administrators and other school employees in this town ... will carry concealed weapons throughout the school day, making use of a little-known Arkansas law that allows licensed, armed security guards on campus. After undergoing 53 hours of training, [the] teachers at the school will be considered guards. ...

In strongly conservative Arkansas, where gun ownership is common and gun laws are permissive, no school district had ever used the law to arm teachers on the job, according to the state Department of Education.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the Clarksville School District had the full-time equivalent of just shy of 360 staff members (including 175 classroom teachers) in its five individual schools during the 2011-2012 school year, the most recent available data from the center. While the district isn't saying which staff members will be armed, a little back-of-the-envelope math suggests that there will be an average of more than four adults carrying a concealed weapon in each of the schools, the largest of which was Pyron Elementary School, which had a total of roughly 650 second-, third-, and fourth-graders at last count. (Or, if you prefer to breakdown concealed weapons by student, the math works out to about one armed adult for every 125 kids.)

The Minnehaha County Sheriff’s office says a 32-year-old woman shot herself in the ankle with a nine millimeter handgun yesterday afternoon at the Garretson Sportsman’s Club.

Captain Paul Niedringhaus says the woman was performing a move she learned in a self-defense course. Niedringhaus say the move involves falling and firing from your back.

Niedringhaue says two witness confirm the victim was practicing the manuever when the shooting occured. Authorities concluded that it was an accidental shooting. Niedringhaus did not release the woman's name or her condition. She was taken to a Sioux Falls hospital for treatment.

I wonder if she had a concealed carry permit. I guess it doesn't matter since she's highly unlikely to be charged with a crime.

The gun-rights fanatics think this is normal behavior. I think it's fantasy-dwelling playacting in which they pretend to kill bad guys. It's driven by a combination of fear and insecurity that I call grandiose victimism.

Monday, July 29, 2013

The geographic patterns were some of the most surprising in the General Social Survey, researchers said. Gun ownership in both the South and the mountain region, which includes states like Montana, New Mexico and Wyoming, dropped to less than 40 percent of households this decade, down from 65 percent in the 1970s. The Northeast, where the household ownership rate is lowest, changed the least, at 22 percent this decade, compared with 29 percent in the 1970s.Age groups presented another twist. While household ownership of guns among elderly Americans remained virtually unchanged from the 1970s to this decade at about 43 percent, ownership among young Americans plummeted. Household gun ownership among Americans under the age of 30 fell to 23 percent this decade from 47 percent in the 1970s. The survey showed a similar decline for Americans ages 30 to 44.

Still more:

Many Americans were introduced to guns through military service, which involved a large part of the population in the Vietnam War era, Dr. Webster said. Now that the Army is volunteer and a small fraction of the population, it is less a gateway for gun ownership, he said.Urbanization also helped drive the decline. Rural areas, where gun ownership is the highest, are now home to about 17 percent of Americans, down from 27 percent in the 1970s. According to the survey, just 23 percent of households in cities owned guns in the 2000s, compared with 56 percent of households in rural areas. That was down from 70 percent of rural households in the 1970s.The country’s changing demographics may also play a role. While the rate of gun ownership among women has remained relatively constant over the years at about 10 percent, which is less than one-third of the rate among men today, more women are heading households without men, another possible contributor to the decline in household gun ownership. Women living in households where there were guns that were not their own declined to a fifth in 2012 down from a third in 1980.

Notice how out of the more than 8,000,000 people licensed to carry, you only find a handful in a year who do something wrong with their guns?

Umm, Greggy, unless you believe tens of thousands of gun deaths and hundreds of thousands of gun injuries are a "handful," you're quite mistaken.

Here's where Greggy's silly comment goes quite wrong, however. It's that almost all gun deaths and injuries are preventable. Maybe not each one but certainly in the 99% range.

Let's look at air travel, for instance. Each year, millions fly billions of miles. And each year more passengers fly and more miles are flown. Yet, commercial aviation fatalities have decreased for the past two decades. That's because when an aviation accident occurs--steps are taken to fully understand what happened and to implement steps to ensure it doesn't happen again. This may mean more pilot training, changes to equipment or maintenance, modifications to procedures, better security, etc.

When 9/11 occurred, the airlines and Government didn't decide the proper response was to loosen security and hand out boxcutters at the boarding gate.

Same goes for drunk driving. It wasn't long ago that drunk driving was treated like a parking ticket. When greater penalties and enforcement came about--drunk driving deaths have decreased 50% despite more drivers driving more miles. Again, the response to drunk driving wasn't to install beer kegs in cars.

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. -- Police in Arkansas are investigating an accidental shooting at a Lions Club Gun Show in Hot Springs, Arkansas.Authorities say when Charles Pike picked-up a gun off the table, the weapon fired, hitting him in the hand. The bullet then ricocheted off the floor and grazed another man.Organizers say gun shows follow strict safety measures for both visitors and vendors, and they're unsure how exactly the shooting happened.

Ever notice how when one of these frequent "accidents" occur, all these self-professed gun experts haven't a clue as to how or why the "accident" happened? All of a sudden, it's an Act of God that transcends all human understanding. Yet, if someone calls a clip a magazine or vice versa--you'll get 9 gazillion words from 4,892 gunloons explaining the history, technology, politics and metallurgy of gun magazines. But when a gunloon shoots himself at a gunshow--it's just a mystery that cannot be explained.

An 18-year-old man wrestled a gun away from a police officer Friday evening and managed to fire off a shot.According to Beaverton police, Jared Steven Leone walked into Beaverton City Hall just before 6 p.m. and said he was overdosing and needed help. He was talking to a person at the police department's records desk, which is in the same building.Three officers came out to help and that's when police say Leone swung a punch at one of the officers and a struggle ensued. Police say Leone displayed a high amount of strength during the struggle and it was difficult for the officers to restrain him.

At some point, Leone grabbed a gun from one of the officers and fired a single shot. No one was hit. The bullet went into a wall with an empty room on the other side.

Police initially said one officer struggled with the suspect in the lobby, but Detective Sergeant Jim Shumway on Saturday said surveillance video of the incident showed three officers attempted to detain Leone.

Good thing this kid didn't try that with our gun-rights commenters. He woulda been D-E-A-D.

Homestead businessman was charged in the fatal shooting of a man he hired for contracting work late Friday evening. Police said funeral home owner, Bill Welsh, 89, and contractor, William Menni, 58, of McKees Rocks got into an argument in the parking lot of William R. Welsh Funeral Home around 12:30 p.m. when Welsh pulled out his handgun and shot Menni.

Sounds like a good SYG case. The old guy obviously felt threatened, right.

But, according to police, upon attempting to steal a gun from the smashed case, he learned that gun beats bat.

All the store manager… of a gun store… had to do was pull out his own personal firearm. And that he did. Pointing it straight at Mosley, the manager successfully ordered the would-be robber to drop the bat, the unloaded gun he was trying to steal, and a nine-inch knife in his possession.

Upon arrival, the sheriff’s department reportedly found Mosley on the floor, still being held at gunpoint by the furious manager. The failed robber was booked on charges of first-degree robbery, first-degree theft, unlawful possession of a firearm, and second-degree criminal mischief.

Adam Kokesh, the gun rights activist arrested after posting an Independence Day video of himself apparently loading a shotgun in Freedom Plaza, will remain in the D.C. jail at least through Monday, a Superior Court judge ruled Friday. U.S. Park Police brought Kokesh to the District on Thursday to face gun charges related to the video. He was arrested July 9 during a raid of his home in Herndon and had been held in Fairfax County on charges of possession of hallucinogenic mushrooms while possessing a firearm. Kokesh’s housemates alleged that he was mistreated in the raid, which was led by a Park Police SWAT team and assisted by local police. Kokesh was posting bail Thursday in Virginia when Park Police arrested him again and took him to the District, according to a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office. Kokesh was charged Friday in D.C. Superior Court with one count of carrying a firearm outside of his home or office. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Chambers called the video a “deliberate and concerted effort to violate” D.C. gun laws.

Just after 11am Saturday morning the Hot Springs Police Department responded to the Lions Club Gun Show at the Hot Springs Convention Center in reference to a shooting.

Once on the scene officers discovered that Charles Pike, 42, picked up a pistol off of a vendors table and the gun went off striking Pike in the left hand. The bullet them ricochet off the floor and struck William Bennett, 37, in the left side of the chest. The bullet did not penetrate Bennett's chest but both subjects were transported to a local hospital for treatment of non life threatening injuries.

Hot Springs detectives are investigating the incident and its unknown if there will be any charges.

This happened in genius country - perfect examples of this are the vendor who displayed a loaded gun and the customer who picked it up, aimed it at his hand and pulled the trigger. I'm sure our local commeter will explain it all away.

The reporting was pretty ingenious too. All that negligence and stupidity and they made it sound like it was just an accident, the gun just went off.